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The Rite of Spring
The Rite of Spring
Name The Rite of Spring
Segment Number Four
Runtime 22:29
Music The Rite of Spring
Composer Igor Stravinsky
Director(s) Bill Roberts
Paul Satterfield
Story Development/Research William Martin
Leo Thiele
Robert Sterner
John Fraser McLeish
Art Direction McLaren Stewart
Dick Kelsey
John Hubley
Background Painting Ed Starr
Brice Mack
Edward Levitt
Animation Supervisor(s) Wolfgang Reitherman
Joshua Meador
Animation Philip Duncan
John McManus
Paul Busch
Art Palmer
Don Tobin
Edwin Aardal
Paul B. Kossoff
Special Camera Effects Gail Papineau
Leonard Pickley
Previous Segment The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Next Segment Meet the Soundtrack
Gallery The Rite of Spring Gallery


The Rite of Spring is the fourth and longest segment in Fantasia. The plot involves the Big Bang, the Dinosaur Age, and extinction.

Overview[]

Introduction[]

"When Igor Stravinsky wrote his ballet, "The Rite of Spring" his purpose was, in his own words, "to express primitive life." And so Walt Disney and his fellow artists have taken him at his word. Instead of presenting the ballet in its original form as a simple series of tribal dances, they have visualized it as a pageant as the story of the growth of life on Earth. And that story, as you're going to see it, isn't the product of anybody's imagination. It's a coldly accurate reproduction of what science thinks went on during the first few billion years of this planet's existence. Science, not art, wrote the scenario of this picture. According to science, the first living things here were single-celled organisms, tiny little white or green blobs of nothing in particular that lived under the water. And then, as the ages passed, the oceans began to swarm with all kinds of marine creatures. Finally, after about a billion years, certain fish, more ambitious than the rest, crawled up on land and became the first amphibians. And then several hundred million years ago, nature went off on another task and produced the dinosaurs. Now, the name "dinosaur" comes from two Greek words meaning "terrible lizard", and they were certainly that. They came in all shapes and sizes, from little crawling horrors about the size of a chicken to hundred-ton nightmares. They were not very bright. Even the biggest of them had only the brain of a pigeon. They lived in the air and the water as well as on land. As a rule, they were vegetarians, rather amiable and easy to get along with. However, there were bullies and gangsters among them. The worst of the lot, a brute named Tyrannosaurus Rex was probably the meanest killer that ever roamed the earth. The dinosaurs were lords of creation for about 200 million years. And then... well, we don't exactly know what happened. Some scientists think that great droughts and earthquakes turned the whole world into a gigantic dustbowl. In any case, the dinosaurs were wiped out. That is where our story ends. Where it begins is at a time infinitely far back when there was no life at all on earth, nothing but clouds of steam, boiling seas and exploding volcanoes. So now imagine yourselves out in space billions and billions of years ago looking down on this lonely, tormented little planet spinning through an empty sea of nothingness." - Deems Taylor, roadshow version

Plot[]

The Milky Way Galaxy can be seen coming out of the darkness as comets, the sun, and shooting stars pass by. Eventually, Earth is shown being born. Volcanos light up the planet as they burst with lava. Multiple volcanoes erupt. The storm worsens, and then everything goes silent.

The scene changes into a sea with green and blue microscopic organisms that split up. One fish crawls onto land, becoming the first amphibian. Gradually, dinosaurs begin to appear, living out their lives. On a cliff, Pteranodons swoop down to catch the fish below. One of them catches a fish, but it is pulled down by a Tylosaurus.

Stegosaurus vs

The confrontation of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus

Everything was going so quiet for the dinosaurs. Every dinosaur is doing what the dinosaurs would do. Until then, they look up ahead, as rain begins to fall, and see the Tyrannosaurus Rex. He chases the dinosaurs, and bites the Stegosaurus' tail. The Stegosaurus and the T-Rex both fight, with the T-Rex biting the Stegosaurus' neck and the Stegosaurus using his tail to beat the T-Rex. The dinosaurs look on while Stegosaurus did his last two hits and T-Rex bites his neck and brings him down, killing him. The dinosaurs leave while T-Rex eats him.

Later, everything was destroyed. There was no food and water for the dinosaurs, nothing but dried up pools, branches, ruined trees, and mud. The sun is too hot for them. The dinosaurs move on and some of them are stuck in the mud with Ceratosaurus coming to them. The wind blows and some dinosaurs collapse. Later, footprints are seen and we see bones of the dinosaurs, showing that they are now extinct.

Just as the moon began to form an eclipse with the sun, an earthquake suddenly erupted, wiping the dinosaur bones away. The wind then blew a storm and the sea inland, the lowland and everything around became completely flooded, and everything was silent once again. At the end, when the eclipse was complete, you see it set over the only piece of land, overlooking a now endless sea.

Videos[]

Credits[]

Trivia[]

  • The Rite of Spring is a fan-favorite segment.
  • There are rumors of a scene from The Rite of Spring that was cut because it might offend creationists. This segment featured early human life. However, people dispute both how far it got into production before being shelved and if it even exists. Sources will usually either tell you that it's entirely completed or that it barely made it past the drawing board.
  • In the original roadshow version's introduction, as Deems Taylor begins to introduce the segment, the chimes player accidentally falls against his chimes. This scene was left out of subsequent re-releases, until the roadshow version was recreated.

Appearances[]

  • Elasmosaurus
  • Tylosaurus
  • Pteranodon
  • Dimetrodon
  • Nothosaurus
  • Triceratops
  • Kannemeyeria
  • Brontosaurus
  • Diplodocus
  • Plateosaurus
  • Gryposaurus
  • Anatosaurus
  • Parasaurolophus
  • Stegosaurus
  • Struthiomimus
  • Troodon
  • Archaeopteryx
  • Brachiosaurus
  • Tyrannosaurus Rex
  • Ceratosaurus
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